Well yeah, the first job is never enough to live on in today’s economy. It’s all a huge mobius double clusterfuck-22. “What do you MEAN I can’t hold up this bank without a reference? How am I supposed to get prior experience for an entry-level felony?”

Nowadays most criminals have a Patrecon to support themselves while they build up their criminal record, but back in those days you stole what you could get.

Some individuals advocate for “person-first” language (e.g. “person who henches”). However, this advice is generally regarded as tedious at best, and actively harmful at worst, in the hench community, and as such is often given out by well-intentioned but overzealous hench allies. In casual conversation, “henchman” can be used as a gender-neutral; “henchperson” can be clunky, but is preferable to its somewhat degrading alternative, “minion”. Terms like “henchwoman” and “henchgirl” are met with mixed reactions; while some appreciate the terms as valid and useful feminine counterparts to “henchman”, others believe them to be unnecessary and patronizing (see: “teacheress”). Holy Puteoli I can’t believe I came up with all that off the top of my head.

(Also, just to ruin the joke: the first third is a reference to the idiotic “people with disabilities” thing that I’m pretty sure hasn’t been a thing for a while, the middle third is self-explanatory, and the last third is the result of my staying up past midnight just to wait for this comic to update even though I started hitting a wall over an hour ago)

Aaah, the autism community. Where those of us who are actually autistic need a damn hashtag designating ourselves that to distinguish from the parents, and then they tell us we don’t get to speak for autism as a whole because we’re ‘too high-functioning’ because we can communicate at all.

(Meanwhile a lot of us think the functioning labels are more harm than good – in no small part because of parents Like That – and people who would be considered ‘low-functioning’ by Asshole Logic have to go ‘Actually no, if we have to choose one group to be the Spokespeople Of All Autism, we’re choosing the fellow autistics over the parents, you guys sometimes kill your children because you think our existence is so miserable.’)

(Obviously though no one opinion ACTUALLY speaks for Autism As A Whole because we’re by definition a broad spectrum of behaviors and have varied and sometimes contradictory needs. This disclaimer shouldn’t be necessary but I’m putting it anyway because people. I think we’re pretty much all in agreement that people should stop using it as a generic insult on the internet, though. And there’s a pretty broad consensus that Autism Speaks fucking sucks.)

Speaking as the parent of an adult son with autism, wouldn’t the best idea be for both sets of us to advocate for those who aren’t able to advocate for themselves? I mean, we parents have have inside knowledge too, even if not the same set as the people who have the condition.

And I also feel that if only one person / set of people gets to advocate for my son, I’d far rather it was me than anyone else, because I’ve known him all his life, and someone else doesn’t know him (individually) at all.

That said, surely you and we should be regarded as on the same side? 🙁 Do we have to fight over who has the right to try and do the best by the people whose well-being we care about?

@ Arian: For specific needs in, say, a school setting, parents can certainly be useful! And there are certainly good parents who I trust with their children’s backs (mine included). The problem is that there is a very specific type of Autism Parent who
1) Makes their child’s autism all about how difficult it is for them. And yeah, it is a really difficult thing, more than you expected when you planned to become a parent… but that’s the lot you’ve got now, and no matter how difficult it is for you, your kid is going through an even tougher time.
2) Thinks the end goal of any treatment is to ‘cure’ the autism or at least make their child appear as neurotypical as possible. This isn’t gonna happen. You can teach coping strategies, you can make your kid as comfortable in their own skin as you can, and that will help them handle life tremendously. But, say, attempts to extinguish harmless stimming are just going to leave your kid with one less means of expression and a lot of trauma. (Obviously harmful ones should be redirected, but stimming can very much be communicative so failure to recognize that means you’re not listening to your kid.)
3) Related to the above, trigger warnings for institutional abuse and ableism: When you’re autistic, it’s not abuse, it’s therapy. Even well-meaning parents can get referred to the Lovaas method (treats children like dogs to be trained, down to withholding food except as reinforcement of behavior) or some school that looked great but turned out to practice something awful. Well-meaning parents realize their children are being abused, remove them from that and get them into therapy. Some parents are not well-meaning.
4) Parents who know what their specific kid needs are great. Parents who present themselves as the Experts On All Things Autistic, Ever are not, especially if they use that platform (such as Autism Speaks) to speak over and deny a platform to other people who are autistic. Up to and including their children. See previous distressing point.
5) And, sadly, there is a very specific type of parent who thinks their child would be better off dead than autistic – I include here anti-vaxxers (a whole other rant for a whole other day) and the ones who actually kill their children for being disabled. We don’t hold sole claim on Disability Day of Mourning, hence its name not being solely ‘Autistic’. But the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network is a major organizer and one of the founders. We have a vigil every year, and people on ASAN’s payroll compile The List of disabled people murdered by their caregivers. It is a very long list. It is an unimaginably sad list.

So obviously, Not All Autism Parents and not under all circumstances. But the parents who believe 1 and 2 are likely to believe 3, and some of them believe 5. Autism Speaks once put out a video where one of its members (and I’m pretty sure a BOARD member) talked about how she once considered driving off a bridge with her autistic child, and it was only the thought of her non-autistic child that stopped her. She said this on camera, with her autistic child in the room. This was published and in some way endorsed by Autism Speaks. You can imagine why this is harmful.

@Regalli – The link you provided in your third point is spinechilling. I myself don’t have autism, but I have generalised anxiety and depression. And if someone enforced ‘quiet hands’ on me when I was in a stressful situation, all the voluntary and semi-voluntary physical motions I use to reduce my anxiety would probably be replaced by my shrieking like a train whistle. Let alone anyone trying to suppress my son’s similar motions – he can shout much louder than I can. 😛 The public can damn well learn to cope with the noiseless strategies, if they don’t want to hear us as well as just see us. 😛

As for holding an autistic person’s hands against/in a texture that causes them distress – I’m sorry, WHAT? Isn’t that like forcing a person to listen to sounds at a volume loud enough to hurt their ears, while telling them it’s good for them?! What lunatic thought this up??

I think the preferred terminology varies still between the more specific disability communities and between various English-speaking countries. I think the UK actually prefers person-first as a rule, though I could be misremembering. Though I’m pretty sure everyone uses, say, blind over ‘person with blindness’ because it’s both a really active community who consider it an integral part of their lives and the person first one is twenty times clunkier than average. Pretty sure it’s the same with the Deaf community for the same general reasons.

Phineas Mason knocks on your door, holding what looks to be a copy of the KJV Bible but is actually a hollow receptacle for smuggled alien tech. “Have you considered letting the high-altitude vacuum seal into your life?”

Minion was totally reclaimed though, and was super respectable for a while. Then, y’know, they released the Despicable Me films, and that all went down the drain fast.

Anyway, “person who henches” is still super okay, if you’re one of those classic-form, monologue-obsessed villains. Gotta stick to form, after all.

“Dither not, person who henches, lest the foul putrescence of the lair spread to take root behind thine idling ears. Come thee hence, and speedily ready yon death ray. For, verily, what manner of gloating discourse is to be held to any merit, if it is not given the accompaniment of a slowly advancing murder trap?“

I was going to say “definitely not henchgirl” because I’m kinda annoyed at the whole -man/-girl dichotomy, but then I remembered that Sal was an actual fictional girl when the robbery would have taken place so yeah, henchgirl.

Yuuuup. Drugs, crimes, witchcraft, vampirism… the fundie set loves hearing people talk about their crazy criminal occultist past until they Found Jesus and Turned Their Life Around.

And if it turns out that (generously) most of these backstories are (INCREDIBLY generously) embellished, well, they’re not just lying for fame and money. They’re lying to GIVE WITNESS TO THE RIGHTEOUS PATH OF THE LORD, which incidentally has fame and money as a side benefit. And anyway it’s not a lie, it’s more of a parable, and Jesus used parables all the time.

Myep. A couple decades ago it was “i used to be a satanist!” Now it’s “I used to be an atheist!” (see: Lee Strobel) Back then their stories weren’t recognizable as what satanists were like and nowadays no atheists would talk like they do – but they DO speak like what christians IMAGINE they sound like!

And if a christian is brave enough to call them out for it because, for example they ~know~ the person never did what they’re claiming then they get shouted down for it. “Stumbling others” i think it’s called.

You’re being way more generous than I would ever be to these sort of fundies. Their stories are ridiculous lies, and if they’d done half of the crazy and illegal shit they claimed to have done before they “found Jesus”, they’d probably be in jail. Guess what fundies: lying for Jesus is still lying.

Its what some groups call their “personal path to finding jesus” like ifyou ever go to a retreat or a church event where people talk about their day to day problems usually the person lead it will give some kind of background on themselves and how they got to find god or whatever. Dramatic stories like that get eaten up

You remember when Ben Carson made up some crap about how he was a total delinquent when he was younger and tried to stab some guy except it hit his belt buckle, and everyone laughed because the whole thing was barely plausible and existed only to make up some fake backstory to make him look more virtuous in the present?

Think about it! Marcie:Criminal Mastermind would explain A) Why Sal was willing to take the fall herself (bffs, she feels responsible, and Marcie’s family would almost certainly be deported in the investigation), B) Why Marcie looks so nervous in a preview panel, C) Why Marcie and Sal have been so ride or die that Marcie’s willing to follow her to Bloomington (I mean, other than the whole ‘learning ASL to keep talking, sticking up for her, trying to help with the ambulance, etc.’

I’m not thinking this is canon (at least not yet) but DUDE. I want this fanfic somewhere.

Yeah Sal seems to have more favor for people who don’t glorify her. Which is logical, Danny for example is best buds with Sal but there was that one time he low key told her to piss off right after Amber/Amazi-girl dumped him and then there was When she met up with Billie face to face for the first time in years and it started with Billie blowing up in her face then making up right after then giving her a motorcycle ride.

I’d disagree on this one. It’s a college dorm, there’s only about 5 square feet of sittable surface other than the ground. Sal is no longer in her bed, it’s now available for basically anyone who she knows well enough to allow in her room in the first place.

Yeah, beds in college dorms are really kind of collective space. Anyone welcome in the room can pretty much sprawl wherever. A little less so with lofted beds, but still.
There’s just not a lot else available.

Like she said, that kind of backstory makes for good witness testimony. She’s grown up hearing about that sort of thing followed by “. . . and then I found God.” and because yadda yadda the lost lamb returned is worth more than 99 that never strayed so they’re seen as being more awesome. Someone who went out and DID STUFF WITHOUT ASKING THEIR PARENTS and STAYED OUT PAST CURFEW and WAS TOTALLY COOL but now that they’ve weighed their options they choose to live pretty much like Joyce which reinforces her worldview so the church wouldn’t judge them if they stayed on the straight and narrow.

Ah yes “witnessing”, where you tell a story of degradation, decadence, and moral perfidy only to end it with the moral that basically parrots Luke 15:4-7 (end with “I say unto you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no repentance”). The story teller gets an ego boost as their redemption is “celebrated in heaven”, and the listeners get a vicarious thrill from listening to all the sinful things the lost lamb did before returning to the flock. And the church leaders get to reinforce the message that life outside of their faith is dangerous and full of horrors, and that the church’s strictures may seem restrictive, but they’re there to protect you.

Hunter S Thompson wrote an article about an atheist form of “witnessing” that arose after the drug fuelled 70’s/early 80’s (either in Songs of the doomed, or Generation of Swine, I don’t have books anymore to check). All these minor celebrity’s were getting media attention by proclaiming how they used to run with the same crowd as John Belushi & co (or even Hunter himself), but were now back on track and clean again. Did wonders for their careers (if they were famous), or gave them their 15 minutes of fame otherwise.

Conversely It’s written that Rasputin (yes THAT Rasputin) preached that the greater the sin, the greater the redemption (using the same bible verses), and preached that you should sin and then beg for repentance. Apparently it worked quite well for him, well until he was poisoned, shot multiple times, bound, and thrown into a hole in an ice covered river. The autopsy report says he managed to partially escape the ropes binding him before dying by drowning. Sometimes “stubbornly clinging to life” is an understatement. 🙂

Come on, Joyce, nothing is stopping you from adopting Sal’s story as your own, adding a few more robberies and shakedowns, and embellishing it all with a dollop of drug-addled Satanism. Lot of money on the Liars4Jesus preaching tour if you can work up the right backstory.

Joyce admires Sal for being cool, but she still doesn’t approve of disobeying authori… nevermind, Joyce is a rebel now. Well, she sucks at accepting scientific evidence, but she is making progress. Now she needs to learn to control her sexuality without repressing it.

Street Fightin’ is just like Street Fighter, but all the characters are teenagers and the fight ends when Marcie comes in to break it up. The winner is no one because Marcie gets mad at them for fighting. It’s a really fun game, but it makes you feel bad about yourself for having that fun.

I should not be trusted with two usernames, even/especially if one of them is just for use when making one of two very specific kinds of jokes (and my gravatar selection is so out there nobody would confuse me for two separate people regardless).

Everyone does some dumb shit in their youth maybe at a different scale but still. Even if your past might come back to haunt you every now and then the past is still just that the past. Who you were before isn’t who you are now it’s who you choose to be in the present that makes the difference.

On the other hand, who you are is intrinsically tied to your past experiences and the choices you made that led to those, and those choices are much more transparent to the people around you than what you’re thinking/who you’re trying to be in the moment and thus are going to be what you get judged on, regardless of whether that’s “fair” or not. Your past mistakes have a way of sticking with you, socially and psychologically, until/unless you do something to actively distance yourself from that (which is what Marcie is keeps trying to encourage Sal to do).

Well said and solid point given, like I said your past will still haunt you. but I feel like that’s more public perception of who you are vs self perception. It’s true that past experience helps build your character but more in a sense of constantly growing to be a better version of who you were before and no one will know how you’ve grown better than yourself when it’s all said and done.

I winder if it’s more that Joyce never went against her partner or authority at all until recently, but she always secretly wanted to do some things that were frowned on by her parents and church members. So, while she loves Jesus, she’d also like t

Hit “post comment” too quickly. She loves Jesus, but wishes she was allowed to do more fun things, and always secretly admired people who went ahead and did things without thinking of the consequences.

That’s particularly fitting/amusing considering a personal account I read once from someone who’d been to a dangerous jail. He said that once you’re in there, you HAVE to join a “clique” if you’re to survive (otherwise you’ll be rightly viewed as easy prey and become the constant target of bullying or worse), and your choices are either one of the gangs, or the Christians.

The “helped” bit casts some doubt on that theory. Unless she was helping Marcie rob the place herself, which seems unlikely.

Walky knew about it – mentioned long ago. That suggests their parents and the cops did too, doesn’t seem like something she would have just confided in Walky.
I wonder if she rolled over on whoever she’d helped with the first one? And that’s part of how she got away with just getting sent to Catholic school. Doesn’t seem like she’d be let off that lightly if they knew she’d been working with others who were still at large.

I was wondering about that, too.
Did she rob two stores in one night?
Did she rob one store one day and was on the lam until the second store?
Did she rob one store one day and no one knew until she was recognized at the second store?
Did she get away with robbing the first store and confessed to it for some reason?

Well, it’s not unlikely that even if she wasn’t recognized the first time, they had a description and/or witness (hell, probably video), so once she was in custody, it would be easy to match her up with the previous robbery.

I’m wondering if it’s a bit of both or if it was different motivations for different robberies. IIRC, Willis has said the reason Sal didn’t wear a mask at the second robbery (The one with Amber) was because she wanted to get caught – that makes a lot of sense if she’s lashing out at her parents emotional abuse but no sense at all if she’s trying to help Marcie. It would also have made more sense to cut her losses and pick a different target when she saw the bulletproof glass at that store, but she didn’t bother.

If Joyce is how Willis used to act, then there used to be a real life version of her.
And since I assume that lifestyle still exists despite Willis no longer being a part of it, then there’s a possibility that a similar person exists now.

I wonder is Sal is going to feel somewhat guilty about maybe leading Joyce down the path to thinking that all the wrong things are cool? Come to think of it, though, have there ever been any right things that are cool?